"Why stake her?" she asked.
"To give her and myself time to be quiet. Time to think over the way we each live."
"And someday you'll yank that dreadful wooden stake out of her heart?"
"I don't know," he answered.
"How long have you been alone?"
He shrugged. "I no longer count the years."
"I need help, Justin. Will you help me?"
Slowly he closed the lid on the casket.
"I had a baby like you," she said. "She was half-human, but someone killed her. Drained the blood from her tiny body."
"The person did her a favor," he mumbled.
"No, he didn't. She wanted to live. She begged for life, and a man refused to allow her to have one. I . . . did something to the man for which he will never forgive me. Now he too must return home. Home for him is Europe. He will probably leave tonight.
I need you to go back with meto where he and I had lived so I can take whatever remains behind."
"Your coffin with your home soil."
"The soil may be tainted, but there may be money to help in the journey I have to take. Will you go with me tomorrow morning?"
"I take care of the dead."
Cecelia meditated throughout the night, keeping the tarp-wrapped skull close to her body. Justin slept, but not peacefully.
Sometimes he would jerk awake and would appear almost relieved to find Cecelia guarding the premises. Who, she wondered, did he fear? His mother, or perhaps those that would come to destroy her?
In the morning he left Cecelia to go down to a nearby stream that ran just past the cemetery. She followed, curious about the man on whom she was basing her fate. He stripped the clothes from his body, revealing a well-molded form, perfect as Liliana's body had been. He scrubbed his body clean while she watched. In the chill water he had no erection. His pale body did not have the glow of a vampire. She could see no scar, no blemish, no visible network of veins. Body hair was minimal.
She thought about joining him in the stream; however, she had no time for play. The taste and feel of his body would remain a mystery. She needed him not as a lover, but as a companion.
He stepped out of the stream and vigorously rubbed his body with the pale lilac towel he had carried down with him. He saw her, and his erection began to flower. Turning her back to him, she walked back to the mausoleum. Once she was inside, the darkness felt good, the bareness soothed. When she spotted the tarp-wrapped skull, she knew she must hide it before Justin returned. She would not return to the Victorian house with the skull in her possession. Spying the casket, she moved closer and opened the lid.
Justin's mother waited for her son to get over his snit. Cecelia could not make out the features, since the folds of the skin had dried into paper-thin slices. The woman's hands were merely skeletal bones with flakes of a dark tissue paper lightly spread across them. The dress was overlarge for the body, and the burgundy cloth had grayed. The style of the dress could be dated a good twenty years back.
Cecelia hurried to the tarp-wrapped skull and picked it up. She returned to the casket and sought a safe spot for the skull. Why not? she thought, placing Marie's skull next to the mummified head. She placed it against the backside of the casket, feeling the features through the tarp and placing the skull face-up.
"You'll probably feel more comfortable here than where you came from," she whispered.
After closing the lid, she became aware of her hunger. She would never make do with petty animals. Soon she would need to make a human kill.
The door squeaked open behind her.
"I'm ready to go," Justin said.
Chapter Sixty.
Justin wore a dark-brown flannel shirt, well-worn jeans, and Birkenstock sandals. Most of the buttons on his shirt were open, allowing the sleeves to hang over the back of his hands and his smooth chest to be partly exposed. The broad, black sunglasses he wore hid his green eyes.
Cecelia, still in her clothes from the day before, felt unclean and couldn't wait to at least change her clothes once she reached the house.Cecelia saw the mothers walking with their small children to school buses. Some children looked half-asleep, others looked miffed at the inconvenience, and only a few gloried in the challenge of the day.
"How were you taught, Justin?"
"I went to a private school. A school where the children didn't make fun of the fact that I had to wear dark glasses all the time.''
"Do you ever walk around without the glasses?"
"When alone or with a person who understands." He looked at Cecelia, and she remembered that she hadn't seen the dark glasses until they were about to leave for the house.
"I'm famished," she said. "What are you going to do for food?"
"I'll have a bagel and coffee when we're through at your house."
"You never drink blood?"
"Only in small amounts. I have never killed anyone."
"Except for your mother," she reminded him.
"My mother cannot truly die."
A man dressed in a green T-shirt and matching green shorts ran with his black Labrador. Rich in swollen blood vessels, his hand held tightly on to the leash.
She paused as the man ran by her. Justin's hand touched her shoulder, forcing her to recall the task she had to perform.
"I don't know how you can wait for that bagel and coffee, Justin."
"Because it will taste better when I don't have a distasteful chore to accomplish."
"Two more blocks and we make a right. Our house is the fourth one on our side of the street."
The next two blocks were empty of people except for some teenagers sitting on the steps of a dilapidated house, sharing drags of marijuana.
Justin and Cecelia made their turn, and she saw several people standing where the Victorian house should be. She pulled Justin across the street, and both slowly wandered down the block.
The house had been burned to the ground. Louis had made sure he had left nothing for her. Her casket as well as the body of her child were ashes. The houses on either side still stood, but were not inhabitable. The raw gaping hole on a neighbor's house testified to the heat and strength of the fire. The other house had an exposed inner wall, with Mother Goose characters sprinkled across the wallpaper.
"Maybe you no longer have to worry about this man." Justin had turned toward her to study her reaction, she knew.
"This is his doing. He exists."She walked closer to the curb. Her attention was distracted by a neighbor who whispered and pointed in her direction. Several people had turned to look at her.
Cecelia grabbed Justin's hand and led him down the block.
"He will come back for you, won't he?" Justin asked.
The smell of burnt wood receded as they walked. The hunger increased. Justin escaped from her grip and placed his arm around her shoulders.
"I know where you can feed," he said.
"And afterwards I have to return to home soil."
She was very tired and needed to rest. She needed to plan her future without Louis.
Mary Ann Mitchell's short stories have been published in a number of magazines. The short story "The Hyacinth Girl" appeared in the anthology The Year's Best Horror Stories: XXI, edited by Karl Edward Wagner, and a modified version became the first chapter of Drawn to the Grave. Born and raised in New York City, Mary Ann now resides in California with her husband.
Currently she is Secretary of the Steering Committee of the Northern California Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Her E-mail address is: [email protected]. Mail may be sent to the following address: Mary Ann Mitchell 650 Castro Street Suite 120-332 Mountain View, CA 94041